Still, yes sometimes, it depends. If you’re taxing essentials, then it still will marginally impact the poor more.
It’s possible to keep the gross revenue the state collects constant while shifting the burden onto poor people and the rich have been doing that since forever, since they can afford to invest in never paying their fair share.
Just in the case of sales taxes, poor people can’t usually afford to buy things in bulk, meaning more small transactions each of which gets taxed, and the rounding error always plays in the government’s favor.
I don’t really think double dipping is that big of a problem on its own. I think that regressive taxes are. Taxes that disproportionately affect the poor. And rich people and non-human corporations’ ability to control the government and reduce their tax burdens to historical lows unheard of since the 16th century, in places where slaves were the main economic engine.
it’s a slightly different double dipping, but through stints of being self-employed: nothing sucks more than paying employment taxes for yourself.
republicans talk about helping small business. from my personal experience that would mean: single payer health care, fixing employment taxes for self-employed people, and simplifying the tax code.
the only one of those republicans ever mention is simplifying the tax code. but for them that seems to involve flattening brackets, which is flat-out stupid. :\
the democrats could own this – but, like so many issues, they choose not to… for obvious reasons.
It’s a memetic trigger, like “death tax”. I’ve been in the room while local Republicans were quite cynically discussing it. It exploits cognitive biases - “that money’s been taxed already, it shouldn’t be taxed again!” to reframe a pragmatic issue of resource allocation as a moral issue. It’s easy to sucker people into doing your will if you can exploit their moral value system.
All money will always be taxed again and again, obviously. The point is to get the money to do good and necessary things in the way that does the least harm. Generally that means taking a small percentage from the richest and most successful, and they hate that.
